Stage Kiss premiered in May 2011 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre. In the work, a middle-aged actor and actress who were each other's first loves are cast in a forgotten 1930s melodrama about a middle-aged couple rekindling their love affair. As they kiss and kiss in rehearsal, the story onstage follows them home as they begin to lose touch with their realities. Casting for the production will be announced in the future. Mark L. Montgomery and Jenny Bacon led the company at the Goodman, along with Jeffrey Carlson, Erica Elam, Scott Jaeck, Sarah Tolan-Mee, and Ross Lehman.

With Stage Kiss, Ruhl returns to Playwrights Horizons for the first time since their 2008 production of Dead Man's Cell Phone. A Pulitzer Prize finalist for her plays In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play and The Clean House, Ruhl is also the author of Passion Play, a cycle, Melancholy Play, Eurydice, Orlando, Dear Elizabeth, and Late: a cowboy song. Taichman has served as the director of the plays Milk Like Sugar, Luck of the Irish, The Scene, Marie Antoinette, Sleeping Beauty Wakes, Mauritius, and many others.